1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a method and an apparatus for processing multi streaming contents.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
A network proposed for home networking, for example UPnP, consists of a plurality of UPnP devices, services, and control point (CP). A service on UPnP network represents a smallest control unit on the network, which is modeled by state variables. A CP (Control Point) on UPnP network represents a control application equipped with functions for detecting and controlling other devices and/or services. A CP is operated on a physical device such as a PDA providing the user with a convenient interface.
FIG. 1 illustrates a block diagram representing conventional UPnP AV architecture and services. As shown in FIG. 1, a UPnP AV home network comprises a media server (MS) 120 providing a home network with media data, a media renderer (MR) 130 playing media data through the home network, and an AV control point 110 controlling the media server 120 and the media renderer 130. In here, the media renderer 130 can be broadly called as a media player or a player. The media server 120 and the media renderer 130 are devices controlled by the control point 110. Further, one of media renderers can be a control point.
The media server 120 includes CDS (Content Directory Service) 121, CM (Connection Manager) 122, and AVT (AV Transport) 123. The CDS 121 stores media files and information of containers (which correspond to directories) as the corresponding object information. An ‘object’ is a comprehensive terminology indicating both an item having information about more than one media file and a container having information about a directory. Depending on circumstances, the terminology of ‘object’ can be used to specify either an item or a container. One item corresponds to one or more than one media file. For example, multiple media files of the same content but with different bit rates are managed as a single item. The CM 122 service is used to manage a connection with a media renderer 130 via standard UPnP actions 141. The AVT 123 service is used to transmit AV data to a media renderer 130 via transfer protocol 142 and standard UPnP actions 141. In a specific exemplary, the AVT 123 service can not be equipped in the media server 120, instead only equipped in the media renderer 130.
The media renderer 130 includes RCS (Rendering Control Service) 131, CM (Connection Manager) 132, and AVT (AV Transport) 133. The RCS 131 is used to control a presentation of media data received from the media server 120. The CM 122 service is used to manage a connection with a media server 122 via standard UPnP actions 141. The AVT 123 service is used to receive AV data from the media server 120 via transfer protocol 142 and standard UPnP actions 141.
The conventional UPnP AV architecture and services could support concurrent streaming which can be realized by playback mechanism step by step. But when a user wants to play a video file which is associated with a closed caption file or other video file which has different view of angle such as multi-angle security video, then the user should have to play both video and it's associated caption file or multi-angle video file at the same time with time synchronization. In this case, there is no standard way of exposing of metadata and steaming of multiple contents. In this case, the multi-streaming means a mechanism which can support not only playback of multiple contents but also exposing of associated contents and playing those contents simultaneously. To support these kinds of mechanism, some additional works are needed.
Also, in a specific case, user may wish to switch or change media renderers during playback of media or content. For example, a user watches a movie using a first media renderer (e.g., mobile phone) while moving and after he arrives home he may wish to change a media renderer to a second media renderer (e.g., DTV in living room) form the first media renderer (e.g., mobile phone) because the second media renderer (DTV) may have a large size display device and a better audio device than the first media renderer (mobile phone). But, there is also no standard way of changing media renderers during playback of multi-steaming contents. To support these kinds of mechanism, some additional works are also needed.